LEBANON — Over his professional career, Mike Sheehan has gone from calling a good game of hockey to coaching one. He’ll soon be trying the latter from a new area code.
Lebanon High School recently hired Sheehan as its next varsity girls hockey coach. Sheehan, 44, who has also signed on to teach social studies at LHS, has been a boys hockey coach in New Jersey for 12 years, the last 10 as varsity head coach at Passaic Valley Regional High School in Little Falls, about a 20-minute drive — “on a good day,” Sheehan said last week — from the Lincoln Tunnel and Manhattan.
It’s that atmosphere Sheehan, his wife and son are looking forward to leaving in the rear-view mirror as they make the move north to the Upper Valley.
“It’s a chance to get into an area that a little bit of a slower pace than the metro New York area,” Sheehan said in a phone interview on Friday. “I have a young son who’s 2½ (years old) who will be starting school soon. My wife and I are looking for a change of pace, and (Lebanon) had the social studies and girls hockey opportunities open up at the same time.”
Sheehan is taking over for Brad Shaw, who guided the Raiders the past 10 winters through mostly successful seasons, many of them with small rosters. Lebanon has entered into co-ops with Stevens High and Kearsarge High in recent campaigns to bring those numbers up to healthier levels.
A former club team skater during his Syracuse University days, Sheehan first gravitated toward broadcasting hockey. Between 1997 and 2005, he served as the voice for the Shreveport (La.) Mudbugs, Jackson (Miss.) Bandits and New Mexico Scorpions, using the long bus rides between outposts to “pick the coach’s brains about different things,” Sheehan recalled.
Teaching became his next move after getting out of the full-time broadcasting business, although Sheehan continued to call games on a freelance basis for clubs in the United States Premier Hockey League, the Nashua-based nationwide junior league whose members include the Hooksett-based New Hampshire Junior Monarchs. Sheehan taught social studies at Passaic Valley, as he will at Lebanon.
The one thing he’s yet to do in hockey, however, is coach girls. Sheehan he has had individual girls on his high school teams in the past, but there are only enough to support 10 teams in New Jersey.
“That will be an adjustment, working with a team of girls,” said Sheehan, who came north for a meet-and-greet with his players last week. “I came up for a day and a half or so, met with them, met with a couple of parents, outlined my expectations for them and what they expect for me. They had some very interesting questions: Why come here? Why coach girls? It was just an introduction of what we’d be expecting, and I’ll get more into it when I get here in the fall.”
The Raiders went 9-10-0 last year, reaching the NHIAA Division I quarterfinals. They’ll basically get the entire roster back from last winter, and Sheehan said he’s heard of between five and seven incoming freshman who are also on the way.
“Hopefully, a number of around 20 would be great; that’s one of those things that we’ll get a better idea of closer to the season,” Sheehan said. “Certainly, if it’s in the high teens to 20, that would be a great number to be at.”
Best at the Net: Fresh from recording their third straight VPA Division II state championship, four members of the Woodstock High girls tennis team have been named all-Marble Valley League all stars for their play this spring.
Twin sisters Momo and Kenzie Biele were joined by teammates Chloe Noble and Katey MacMaster on the all-league first time. Momo Biele and MacMaster anchored Woodstock’s singles lineup, while Kenzie Biele and Noble became the state’s top doubles tandem, winning a state title of their own this season. To top it off, MVL officials named Woodstock’s Tom Hopewell as the league’s coach of the year.
Hartford also made a contribution to the team, with freshman phenom Phelan O’Keefe joining the Woodstock quartet on the all-league team. Woodstock’s boys had three selections — Carl Gebhardt, Henry Greene and Danny Drebber — on their MVL all-league squad.
Smarts, and Skills: The Hanover High girls lacrosse team placed two of its top players on the US Lacrosse all-star teams for New Hampshire last week.
Rising senior Maddie McCorkle earned one of nine slots on the state’s All-American roster. A Duke University commit, McCorkle keyed the Marauders both on attack and on draws during the season, and she is the third Hanover player to make the state All-American squad in program history, according to coach Chris Seibel.
Recent graduate Jasmine Lou landed on the state’s All-Academic team. Lou is the first Hanover player so honored since the state revised its process last year to limit the list to nine athletes.
The US Lacrosse list for New Hampshire considered players from both public and prep schools.
Oxbow Openings: Oxbow High is busy trying to fill coaching vacancies in three of its fall sports programs.
Girls soccer coach Charlie Barton, boys soccer coach Ed Scribner and interim cross country coach Jesse Rodimon informed athletic director Derek Cipriano in the spring that they wouldn’t be back this year. Barton is active in the Norwich-based Lightning Soccer Club, and his daughter, Avery, who had a team-high 25 goals last season as an eighth-grader, is bound for St. Paul’s School in August.
Rodimon had been filling in for Katherine Chobanian, who took last year off from coaching while on maternity leave. Cipriano said Chobanian has taken a new job in the school district and has decided not to return to coach cross country.
Cipriano said he hopes to hold interviews and hire replacements in the next two weeks.
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.